Faculty Friday
People of UW: Merrill and Bertil Hille
Distinguished emeritus professors Merrill and Bertil Hille are partners in wellness and paragons of active — even adventurous — aging Like many retired couples of a certain age, Bertil and Merrill Hille log their engagements in an old-fashioned paper calendar. Theirs would look pretty unremarkable, actually, if not for the sprawling range of scribbled triangles [...]
Xiao-Ping Chen connects people across cultures and communication styles
When teaching a course called “Leading Across Cultures,” Xiao-Ping Chen engages her students in a probing discussion of the 2020 Academy Award-winning documentary “American Factory.” This uncommonly perceptive account of a Chinese glass manufacturer’s attempts to open a plant in Ohio is hardly a textbook MBA case study. But Chen, a professor of management at [...]
Creating eco-friendly infrastructure design: Meet Jan Whittington
“I’m exactly where I want to be.” For associate professor of Urban Design and Planning Jan Whittington, this statement sums up her feelings about being on the faculty of a large public university, doing what she loves, with good opportunities to secure research funding. Her statement applies equally well to the 1906 Craftsman near Ravenna [...]
Centering collective care for Veterans: Meet Kate Hoerster
Veterans can be a tight-knit group. Having spent years building a community on whom they could depend with their lives, many Veterans find retirement from the military—and the sudden loss of that community—unsettling, at best. This is one reason why Veterans recovering from behavioral health or addiction disorders often benefit from the support of a [...]
A grand vision for higher education’s future: Meet Dianne Harris
Colleges and universities around the world are experiencing a range of new and historically unmatched pressures for change. The structures, systems, built environments and resources that have served as the fundamental frameworks for higher education are no longer consistently meeting the needs of the diverse citizenry these institutions aim to serve. This is perhaps especially [...]
Sleeping in Seattle: Meet Horacio de la Iglesia
Horacio de la Iglesia doesn’t always practice what he preaches. The sleep scientist and UW professor of biology, whose influential sleep research helped demonstrate the benefits of delaying school start times for Seattle high schoolers, knows that he should go to bed at roughly the same time each night. But on weekends, he likes to [...]
Feed your brains well: Meet neuroscientist Chantel Prat
Most people are at least nominally interested in neuroscience. It’s cool to be able to talk to someone at a party about your recent dendrite growth, or the impact of a boost of serotonin on your personal cocktail of neurotransmitters, or the latest causal approaches to changing cognitive function. Actually, that would be a party [...]
People of UW: Meet Ethnomusicologist Christina Sunardi
Exploring Indonesian culture and identity The UW campuses abound with people who could rightly be characterized as Renaissance people, polymaths, multipotentialites – those who possess both strong intellectual curiosity and strong creative ability, coupled with interest and expertise in multiple subjects – and ethnomusicologist Christina Sunardi is no exception. Christina’s intellectual curiosity was ignited as [...]
Faculty Friday: Nick Johnson
In March, Dr. Nick Johnson (above left), a physician in the Emergency Department, Medical Intensive Care Unit and Neurocritical Care Service at Harborview Medical Center, contributed an article to Prevention describing What Life Is Like Inside a Seattle Emergency Department During COVID-19. We caught up with Dr. Johnson to learn what he and colleagues have [...]
Spotlight: COVID Student Service Corps
At the University of Washington School of Medicine, student service learning never stops—even during a global pandemic. Under “normal” circumstances, more than 500 medical students regularly staff some 50 healthcare projects that serve thousands across Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho. These clinical projects—which encompass advocacy, health education, and mentorship—form the primary pillars of community engagement [...]
Faculty Friday: Seth Cohen
When Dr. Seth Cohen calls UW Medicine’s fight against COVID-19 a “team sport,” he does so with a world champion’s conviction. A gold medalist with the US National Team at the 1999 Ultimate Frisbee World Championships while in college, Cohen now serves as Medical Director for Infection Prevention at UWMC-Northwest as well as chief of [...]